Building Pageless Apps with Rails and Backbone js

ZURB is an interaction design and strategy company with more then 12 years of experience helping companies make users happy through great web interactions.

In this talk Matt Kelly (Lead Engineer) will explain the benefits of removing page loads from web applications to vastly increase the perceived performance of the app, and allow interactions and transitions that are not possible with a traditional page load.

The bulk of the presentation will be presenting Backbone.js and walking through each of the steps to create a pageless app using Backbone.js and Rails. With each step the design and interaction decisions will be explained, and what not to do with pageless apps will be illustrated.

The following details will be covered:

Organizing your JavaScript with Backbone.js

Using page templates that are renderable by both JavaScript and Rails

Client side routing using Backbone

Anchor (page fragment) vs. PushState for creating history and linkable states